A luxury French fashion retailer has sparked huge controversy by claiming its new boutique hotel will not be open to Chinese tourists.
Fashion house Zadig & Voltaire is due to open the hotel in Paris in 2014.
But according to the company's founder, Thierry Gillier, the 40-room hotel will not be open to tourists visiting the French capital from China.
Speaking to WWD, he said: 'We are going to select guests. It wonít be open to Chinese tourists, for example.
'There is a lot of demand in Paris ó many people are looking for quiet with a certain privacy.'
The comments sparked outrage across social media sites in China, including Weibo.
Last year, France was the most popular travel target for the Chinese, with more than 900,000 tourists visiting the country, according to Brand Channel. It is expected that by 2020 this will increase to an astonishing 4 million.

As the nation's capital, Paris is the number one destination for the tourists, who are estimated to have spent $72 billion on luxury goods last year.
Many countries including the UK and Denmark are working hard on attracting wealthy Chinese tourists, making the comments of Mr Gillier all the more remarkable.
However, many in the fashion industry claim the relationship between luxury fashion houses and new rich shoppers may not be one of respect.
Some have claimed that designer brands look down on Chinese luxury consumers because they are seen to 'tastelessly' buy any luxury product on offer.

wow thats incredibly stupid of them, they should know that the new market is in Asia and South America unless they want their racist hotel to collapse in a few years they need to open their eyes its 2012!SMDH!!

Zadig & Voltaire PR have removed Gillier's sentence from WWD, arguing that it was "misinterpreted" and that he meant to criticize "mass tourism", they've changed it to:

"“It will be a slightly private hotel, not open to everybody, with 40 rooms. We are going to select guests. It won’t be open to busloads of tourists, for example. There is a lot of demand in Paris — many people are looking for quiet hotels with a certain privacy.”

Quote:

Originally Posted by LabelWhore4

Don't read the comments on the Daily Fail. They are full of more racist rationalizations from depressing "people".

Ditto, I stopped visiting this website long ago. Whether it's directed at China or France you can be sure there's sh*t load of xenophobic comments.

It's not for nothing the Daily Mail is known as the Daily Heil. Pay no attention, no one does anyway.

This is kind of laughable, it's not like Zadig and Voltaire is one of those brands that you will need to make a huge effort to boycott in the name of principles. For a brand that creates totally ordinary clothes they clearly think very highly of themselves.
All Saints has been selling the same cliche all over the high street for half the price, and people are known to complain it's not worth it.

Absolutely disgusting. Does France have discrimination laws? They have such strong hate speech laws, I would be surprised if they didn't have discrimination laws. In the US, for example, it's illegal to discriminate against someone due to national origin in business.